I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to fitness equipment and, in particular, to control of programmable fitness equipment.
II. Background of the Invention
Modern fitness machines, or exercise machines, including treadmills, steppers, stationary bicycles, and the like are often electronically controlled to vary their resistance levels. For example, stationary bicycles can be electronically controlled to vary their resistance over the duration of an exercise routine to simulate uphill, level and downhill riding conditions. This helps to prevent the user of the apparatus from becoming bored with an otherwise repetitive exercise.
It is also known for exercise machines to measure the heart rate or pulse rate of the user and to adjust the level of exercise accordingly. This helps to maximize the cardiovascular benefits achieved from the exercise without wasting time and effort. It also provides the benefit of quickly detecting dangerously high or accelerating heart rates. Additionally, pulse detection circuitry has been coupled to exercise equipment to provide to the user with a display of the user heart rate. The user can also manually adjust the resistance level according to the display in order to adjust the heart rate as needed.
It is also known to provide a microprocessor within exercise equipment in order to vary the incline of a treadmill or to vary the resistance to the pedaling of a stationary bicycle according to a stored program in order to achieve target heart rates, for example. It is also known to use a stored program to increase the resistance within exercise equipment in order to increase the user heart rate and to decrease the resistance in order to decrease the heart rate accordingly.
Several types of exercise equipment have more than one variable resistance mechanism to affect the user heart rate. For example, conventional treadmills have both variable inclines and variable speeds. Many stationary bicycles have variable pedal resistance for the lower body as well as variable resistance-based exercise mechanisms for the upper body. Since numerous mechanisms of this type are often intended to be operated simultaneously, the resulting heart rate depends on the resistance of all the variable resistance mechanisms and their relationship to each other.
Furthermore, the conditioning of the skeletal muscle groups being exercised by the user depends on which resistance mechanisms are varied. When exercise equipment having interrelated resistance mechanisms varies only a single resistance mechanism to control heart rate the results can be unsatisfactory because achieving a target heart rate in such equipment by merely increasing or decreasing one of the resistance mechanisms does not consider and compensate for the benefits or detriments that may occur by varying the resistance of the other such mechanisms in relation thereto. However, the known devices do not provide the ability to conveniently alter the control programs within the exercise equipment or to communicate with others regarding control of the exercise equipment during a work out.